“Central planning” is a term that was popularized by the former Soviet Union—until it collapsed under the weight of “central planning” in A.D. 1991, ceased to exist, and plunged the people formerly ruled by “central planning” into a decade of chaos, poverty and violence.

We live in a democracy. Most nations in the western world are democracies. We think so highly of democracy, that one of the rationales for invading Iraq and killing thousands of Iraqis was to give the Iraqi people the “blessing” of democracy. As Americans, we are prepared to fight, kill, and sometimes die for our beloved democracy.

Nevertheless, our national commitment to democracy is a little odd since the word “democracy” does not appear in The Constitution of the United States. In fact, the only form of government that’s expressly mentioned in our Constitution is seen at Article 4 Section 4 which declares in part,

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”.

So why did we kill all those Iraqis to give ‘em democracy?

Why didn’t we kill ‘em to give them a “republican form of government”?

For over a decade (and for reasons I’ll explain in another post later this week), I’ve understood that “democracy” is a collectivist form of government fundamentally identical to communism and socialism. I am therefore more than a little intrigued by the terms “collective” and “collectivist”.

So, imagine my surprise when (last week) I stumbled on an A.D. 1988 Supreme Court case that dealt with the “collective entity doctrine”. I’d never before heard of the term “collective entity” in American law and I had no idea that there was a “collective entity doctrine”. That surprised me. I don’t know about a lot of things–in fact, most things are unknown to me. Nevertheless, given my interest in collectivist forms of government, and given that the term “collective entity” has been used by the Supreme Court in at least 9 cases since A.D. 1974, I’m almost amazed that I hadn’t previously heard of this doctrine.

In fact, according to the Braswell v. US case (below), there are at least three other cases (including the earliest instance, Hale v Henkel in A.D. 1906) which did not actually use the term “collective entity” but helped lay the foundation for what came to be called the “collective entity doctrine”.

Thus, the “collective entity” concept has been recognized in American law for over a century, but I just heard about it last week. Apparently, I didn’t get the memo. Nevertheless, I’m amazed by my own ignorance. How could I not have heard of that concept before now?